Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

blanche-2 Despite the fact that it's a B movie,"The Fearmakers" from 1958 is absolutely fascinating to watch today. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, it stars Dana Andrews, Dick Foran, more well-known for westerns, and -- get ready - Mel Torme! And he was good! Andrews plays Alan Eaton, a public relations firm co-owner who fought in Korea and spent time in the enemy camp being tortured. Now back home, he suffers from headaches and blackouts occasionally. When he arrives at his old company, he finds out that his partner died and that the power of attorney he gave his partner was used to sell the business out from under him to Jim McGinnis (Dick Foran). McGinnis offers Alan a consultant job, and he is encouraged to take it by a Senator friend, who suspects shady business in the firm and wants Alan to check it out.Here's the shady business. The firm is suspected of using skewed polling data to make certain politicians look good. Alan has plenty to say about the way questions are asked in polls, and to whom, and he also has some things to say about lobbyists. Anyway, he needs to get his hands on the cards that apparently list the people polled or how they were chosen. He's also suspicious of his partner's "accident" and wants to gather information about that.Of course, today we call these shady people campaign managers, marketing people, Karl Rove -- I sat through the conversation about special interests and polling and thought I had entered the Twilight zone. I had -- it was 1958, and this guy had ethics that don't exist today since the types of things being referred to are acceptable.This film seems short for the material, and there are too many coincidences in the script to make it not totally believable. Andrews does a good job, but by this point had hit the skids - gone were the big 20th Century Fox films, possibly due to his alcoholism. Though he continued to act, he became a very wealthy real estate man and began speaking for the National Alcoholism Council in the '70s. He also served as President of the Screen Actors Guild. Dick Foran is appropriately slimy, and Mel Torme is excellent as an assistant who knows too much.Very interesting movie to view given today's political workings.

MartinHafer Dana Andrews was taken prisoner during the Korean War and finally arrives home after being away for many years. But now he has periodic dizzy spells as a result of his brutal captivity. When he goes to Washington to meet his old business partner at a public relations office, he learns that his partner is dead and the business was sold out from under him to a guy that is obviously a jerk. After storming out of the office, Andrews meets with an old friend, a Senator, and learns that his old firm is doing a lot to distort truth and influence opinion--as they are a probable front group. Oddly, they never say "communist", but it's obvious that's what they intend. So, in order to expose this evil plot, Andrews returns and makes nice with the jerk and joins the firm.Generally, it's a pretty good curio of the time and it is one of the few chances you'll get to see Mel Tormé in an important role (though, oddly, he gets very low billing despite all his screen time). As always Andrews is very good, but towards the very end of the film the writers make a bad gaff--making the otherwise decent film really clichéd. This is when Andrews catches the baddies and is holding a gun on them. Just then, of all times, he gets a blinding headache and drops his gun!!! Come off it, this is just ridiculous and sets up an unnecessary final chase scene.Also, it's rather funny that the things the firm is doing to illegitimately influence public opinion and Congress are EXACTLY the same things many organizations do regularly today!! One example in the film is how they ask loaded questions that make it appear the public feels one way when they don't--something we see on news shows all the time today! Overall, it's not a great film but interesting enough to make it a little better than just a time passer, though fans of Andrews (like me) will probably enjoy it.

avners Wow! What a disappointment. Caught it on TV, and the combination of the theme and Tourneur promised so much. But it turned out to be a clumsy, boring, heavy, theatrical flick. I think the main problem is that the film drowns us with words – the dialogs are too long and pretentious, and the uninspired Mise en scene makes the all experience quite unbearable. From an historical point of view, it's interesting to place this picture seven years or so before the Manchurian Candidate, so these 85 minutes weren't exactly wasted; but had I known it's such a torture, I would not watch it for a million bucks. I also did not like the way the nerd working in the office was treated – such a sallow caricature! All of the sudden he is in love with the girl, and of course he has to sacrifice himself in the end. I also did not understand if the hero was brain washed during the war, and if so, what significance does it have? Anyway, it is sad to see a filmmaker as tourneur producing such a banal picture, which could have been made by quite any B-Movies director of the time. I understand it is considered one of his worst films – I can only second that view.

bmacv The Fearmakers stands as one of the stragglers in the Red-Scare cycle, which ran from the late 1940s pretty much until 1962, when John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate blew it to smithereens. (The studios, running scared, churned them out but the public shunned them in droves.) This one benefits from the talents of director Jacques Tourneur (The Cat People, Out of the Past) and noir icon Dana Andrews; it also features a young Mel Torme as a pusillanimous lackey who relies too much on stage business (mopping his brow, fiddling with his glasses). The movie is somewhat elevated, too, by working with themes that resonate today: How polls and focus groups can be manipulated by well-heeled special interest lobbies -- how, in fact, they can be made to say absolutely anything. Here, it's the disarmament movement, viewed of course as nothing more than a Commie plot. Inevitably, The Fearmakers degenerates into stereotypes as simple as Veda Ann Borg's big round puss.